L/R shoulder buttons not working to jump letters

mitu

@zerobyzero I think this might be specific to the PS3 controller, though I can't confirm since I don't have one. I'll try to 'fake' a PS3 controller via xboxdrv and see if I can reproduce the issue.

@psyke83 do you think that the event filtering added in ES recently might affect the L/R buttons ?

psyke83

@mitu said in L/R shoulder buttons not working to jump letters:

@zerobyzero I think this might be specific to the PS3 controller, though I can't confirm since I don't have one. I'll try to 'fake' a PS3 controller via xboxdrv and see if I can reproduce the issue.

@psyke83 do you think that the event filtering added in ES recently might affect the L/R buttons ?

I don't think so?

The current stable build is broken for PS3 controllers, as the older trigger patch was reverted due to conflicts with other controllers. The master branch has a better patch in place, but there's still a pending PR to further improve the filtering to apply to other controllers: https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/pull/558

No matter whether you run stable, master or master + PR 558, my trigger filtering code a) doesn't affect shoulder buttons, and b) only filters inputs during during input configuration.

Looking at @zerobyzero's input config I can see that it's using the wrong inputs for triggers (should be axes 2 & 5), but shoulder button mappings are correct. However, it appears that ES stores separate mapping configuration related to GUI navigation. My configuration also has this:

  <inputConfig type="joystick" deviceName="Sony PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller" deviceGUID="050000004c0500006802000000810000">
    <input name="rightanalogdown" type="axis" id="4" value="1"/>
    <input name="rightanalogleft" type="axis" id="3" value="-1"/>
    <input name="pageup" type="button" id="4" value="1"/>
    <input name="start" type="button" id="9" value="1"/>
    <input name="rightanalogup" type="axis" id="4" value="-1"/>
    <input name="down" type="button" id="14" value="1"/>
    <input name="leftanalogright" type="axis" id="0" value="1"/>
    <input name="pagedown" type="button" id="5" value="1"/>
    <input name="right" type="button" id="16" value="1"/>
    <input name="select" type="button" id="8" value="1"/>
    <input name="left" type="button" id="15" value="1"/>
    <input name="leftanalogup" type="axis" id="1" value="-1"/>
    <input name="up" type="button" id="13" value="1"/>
    <input name="b" type="button" id="1" value="1"/>
    <input name="a" type="button" id="0" value="1"/>
    <input name="leftanalogdown" type="axis" id="1" value="1"/>
    <input name="x" type="button" id="2" value="1"/>
    <input name="leftanalogleft" type="axis" id="0" value="-1"/>
    <input name="y" type="button" id="3" value="1"/>
    <input name="rightanalogright" type="axis" id="3" value="1"/>
  </inputConfig>

Relevant is the pageup and pagedown, which should correspond to the leftshoulder and rightshoulder mappings (for sixaxis, buttons 4 & 5).

zerobyzero

Interestingly, with your mapping the page up/down works... So could it simply be the name of the inputs? I had "leftshoulder" and I see that "pageup" works.

mitu

@zerobyzero Did you try to re-configure your gamepad after you did the upgrade ?

@psyke83 I took a shot, it didn't seem the PS3 modifications had anything to do with it, but I'm not throughly familiar with ES's input handling - thanks for the explanation.

zerobyzero

@mitu This is my first time using ES so I've only tried the two latest versions: the latest dev and the latest stable. And yes, I reconfigured the pad several times. What I probably didn't do is closing and reopening ES. I've noticed that several things are not always updated until you close/open the program (e.g. making changes in layout A while using it and then activating layout B and A again from the configuration menu).

mitu

@zerobyzero The L/R buttons don't work right away after mapping - which is probably a bug - but they work after a restart. That's a 'feature' - probably because the es_input.cfg is read only on start, but the mapping - in-memory - doesn't have the L/R enabled.

zerobyzero

I can confirm that's not working for me, @mitu. I removed the configuration and I started ES from scratch so I got:

<input name="leftshoulder" type="button" id="4" value="1" />
<input name="rightshoulder" type="button" id="5" value="1" />

By renaming the buttons to pageup and pagedown everything works as expected.

mitu

@zerobyzero Thanks for reporting - let's see if we can find a better solution.

zerobyzero

@mitu It seems simple to fix in the code. I'd say that, to be consistent, the "pageup"/"pagedown" texts should be changed to "leftshoulder"/"rightshoulder". They don't appear in too many files. I'll try to modify the code this weekend, check it works and submit the patch to github.

Regards.

EDIT: Patched and tested, it works. Now I need to figure out how to push to ES git, I'm getting an error 403. Do I need to be verified or something like that to be able to push patches?

mitu

@zerobyzero said in L/R shoulder buttons not working to jump letters:

Do I need to be verified or something like that to be able to push patches?

Modifications are usually sent as Pull Requests to the RetroPie's Emulationstation Github repository - https://github.com/retroPie/emulationstation/pulls.
You'll need to fork the repository, add your modifications (commit) to your repository, then create a Pull Request with the modifications - GitHub will propose you to do so when it detects you pushed your commits.

zerobyzero

Thanks, done.

mitu

@zerobyzero I've taken a look at the PR, but it doesn't seem correct. The .cfg file is not produced by Emulationstation, it's only read by it. The .cfg file is produced - externally - by this script, which already maps the shoulder buttons to 'pageUp/pageDown' (see here).

Moreover, as others pointed out, the mapping appears to be correctly generated for other controllers - my DS4 input configuration has - correctly - pageup/pagedown in the .cfg file, so as my other controllers which have shoulder buttons.

I'm thinking to have something like 'isMappedLike' which handles both D-Pad and Joysticks for movement, to map both types of inputs to the same action.

ExarKunIv

im on build 4.4.12 and using a 8bitdo NES30 and the shoulder buttons work fine

just giving info, thats all :)

zerobyzero

@mitu, I'll check the script but to me the fact that the source code of ES refers to the buttons by two different names is incorrect.

Anyway, I have to say that I didn't download the full package at first. I mean I only downloaded the source code of ES to compile, then when I realised I missed the themes I installed the configuration script. I need to do more testing though.

Regards

mitu

@mitu, I'll check the script but to me the fact that the source code of ES refers to the buttons by two different names is incorrect.

Emulationstation works with more than 1 type of controller and/or keyboard. The fact that it works fine for a lot of other people contradicts your observation.

Anyway, I have to say that I didn't download the full package at first. I mean I only downloaded the source code of ES to compile, then when I realised I missed the themes I installed the configuration script. I need to do more testing though.

If you didn't install the package correctly, then you'll get incorrect results. Install the package from the RetroPie-Setup package - the stable version - then re-configure your controller and see if the .cfg file is correctly generated.